'Hope Springs' David Frankel interview: 'Intimacy is hard at any age'

The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel reunites with Meryl Streep on this week's Hope Springs, a poignant comedy-drama about a couple whose 30-year marriage has become bereft of intimacy.

Digital Spy sat down with Frankel to discuss intimacy issues, his dynamic with Streep, and casting Steve Carell as the straight man.

All your films have an emotional core, but this one feels like the least overtly comedic – it's even fairly sad in some moments."It's surprising to me that the 'sad' part has been a common reaction. It is sad when people can't connect, and the sense of desperation that you feel when there is nothing to look forward to. The depths that Meryl's character sinks to, and also the sadness that Tommy's character feels, to get to that point and feel that disconnected is very sad. But ultimately I felt there was a lot of comedy to the story. They're not joking, but the comedy all came out of the awkwardness of being that intimate, and the struggle to be intimate."

Although it's specifically about an older couple, do you think the issues the film tackles are universal?"Absolutely - at any age, we struggle with intimacy. When you're a kid you think 'I won't have that problem, I'll have sex whenever I want when I'm a grown-up!' And then somehow it doesn't quite turn out that way, and it's so surprising to people, that connection remains so challenging even when you're married. I thought it was fascinating and that it hadn't been explored from this angle, but I also thought it was really funny, and that's how we tried to play it."

You're reuniting with Meryl Streep – was she already attached when the script came to you?"She was, yeah, and so I didn't even need to read it. It's Meryl – I'll do it. But Vanessa [Taylor] wrote a beautiful script that I loved. All great literature is about people feeling alienated and not feeling fulfilled and not feeling connected, and it's all about that. But at the same time I thought it was just an incredible page turner, almost like a thriller, where you're watching these people head towards a point of no return."

Steve Carell is cast as the straight man here, playing the couple's therapist, which is an interesting choice…"I've been dying to work with him for years. Prada and Little Miss Sunshine came out at around the same time, so we were on the same awards circuit that year and kept bumping into each other. That film was a surprising departure for him at the time, but even his work on The Office... I mean it's hilarious and cartoonish at times, very broad, but at the same time it's so invested with pathos. So I had complete faith in his ability to do something like this. I knew he could, but the harder part is: will the audience go with it?"

Is that problem with audience expectations something you've experienced before?"Yeah, I mean Meryl's the perfect example, but she had the opposite problem. For years and years she tried to do comedy, but no-one wanted to see her be funny. 'No, you're Meryl Streep, you do an accent and be dramatic'. And finally in the last six or seven years she's had the free range to just be entertaining. And for myself, I made a movie called The Big Year recently, with three brilliant comedic actors [Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black], and it's a drama with some laughs in it rather than a comedy.

"And the audience enjoyed it, but they kept waiting for the punch line, which muted their enjoyment. We were doing something else, and there can be a frustration when people don't do what you expect from them. It's very hard for actors, comedic actors especially, to break out of that mold."

How much did the script change during the production process, and did the actors have much input?"The ending developed quite a bit. The final scene is a comedic beat that was added fairly late on, and then the whole credits coda got added much later, during production. Meryl had improvised the line of dialog about her fantasy being to renew their vows on the beach, and then she said 'Wouldn't it be great if we actually shot that?' At the time I said 'Yeah, it would, but we don't have the budget, the script, the people…' but we managed to put it together and I think it plays really well."

What can you tell us about your next film, One Chance?"It's a dramatic Rocky story about a guy who wants to sing opera, although again there are a lot of funny parts to that story. James Corden is another example – he's very excited about not having to be 'the funny one'. People are expecting one thing from him, they're expecting One Man Two Guvnors, and it's going to be something different."